Asians wager millions on our football

Australia’s anti-doping agency is examining intelligence that players at up to five National Rugby League clubs may have taken banned or highly questionable supplements.

Chris Eaton, the former head of security for the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), said a Hong Kong bookmaker took bets worth $49 million on an A League football game between Melbourne Victory and Adelaide last December 7. It is believed the bets were laid with the Hong Kong Jockey Club.

Mr Eaton said it was $7 million more than the amount the same bookmaker collected that weekend on a match between Manchester United and Manchester City in the English Premier League.

There is no suggestion that the Melbourne Victory and Adelaide United contest, which Adelaide won 4-2, or any other A-League game has been corrupted.

Mr Eaton, who became the director of integrity for the International Centre for Sports Security last year, said the big bets on the A League game highlighted how punters in Asia are increasingly turning to Australian football because of favourable time zones.

“It certainly highlights the vulnerability of Australian sport in Asia," he said.

A Football Federation Australia spokesman said: ‘‘As far as we are aware, and we have been in touch with VicPol, there is no A-League match under investigation.’’

The five NRL clubs under scrutiny have been named in intelligence gathered by anti-doping agency ASADA, which has collected intelligence that raises suspicions about whether the supplements used by individual players or advisers linked to small groups of players may be in breach of anti-doping rules. The names of the clubs haven’t been made public.

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Auditors from Deloitte working for the Australian Rugby League Council’s in-house investigation visited the headquarters of the Manly Sea Eagles and Cronulla Sharks to seize supplement registers before Thursday’s release of the Australian Crime Commission’s report, which said there was widespread use of banned drugs in professional sport.

The auditors visited Penrith and Newcastle this week. Vials of urine were found hidden in the plumbing at the home ground of the Gold Coast Titans.

“Due to legislative restrictions placed on the NRL we are not in a position to divulge any content from any briefing we received from the ACC," NRL communications director John Brady said.

The sports scientist at the centre of the scandal, Stephen Dank, has previously worked with Manly, Cronulla and to a lesser extent, Penrith. He was deeply involved with Essendon Football Club’s training program last year.

Mr Dank is under investigation over allegations he may have exposed Essendon players to banned peptides while he worked as a sport scientist at the club last year.

He has strongly rejected allegations that his work at Essendon and NRL clubs involved banned substances. AFL chief executive Andrew Demitriou told Melbourne’s 3AW radio on Friday that specific allegations had been made by the commission against at least one AFL club.

“We have been given broad information that would lead us to believe that we have to work with ASADA to investigate some of these broad informations that we have received," he said. “We have got specific allegations but I can’t go into detail without breaching the confidentially [agreement with the commission] about clubs [and] people," he said.

Mr Eaton, said it was no surprise Australian sport was exposed to doping and corruption given the huge amount of money being bet on games across the region. He highlighted how Europol’s recent match-fixing investigation extended into Oceania.

“Australia cannot work in a bubble. This issue needs to be confronted on an international level. It is a totally global activity and you need to go after the money guys," he said

He warned the retrospective allegations that are often done by police needed to be complemented with efforts to disrupt banned drug use. He said Australia’s anti-corruption and doping regime was emerging as one of the best in the world.